There is no way to capture the experiences of more than 600 people who descended on the Hanover Plain to celebrate our 20th reunion. I’ll try to take you back there for a few moments or at least give you a taste of what you missed.


Many of us traveled to Hanover in a rainstorm, but by the time we gathered again the weather decided to cooperate. A stormy forecast forced us into Leverone for our Friday night dinner with the ’88s and ’90s, but for the rest of the weekend we celebrated under open skies. We sat on the porch at Collis for Lou’s eggs and crullers, under the bell tower for our family picnic on Baker Lawn and enjoyed that bucolic walk out to the DOC House for our memorable class gathering on Saturday night. We hiked up mountains, over trails, down old pathways of our memories and of course made the trek down the row at least once, either to point it out to children or during the late-night hours to recapture a small part of ourselves. Many of us attended lectures, rowed on the river, climbed the bell tower, wandered in the Hop, swam in the pool or just spent hours catching up with old friends. It seemed rather magical this time, but all too short.


Classmates traveled from the wide world—Margo Miller and Michael Hafner from London; Jonathan Burnham from Paris; Brooks Entwistle from Mumbai, India; Susan Leong Yates from New Zealand; and Stephen Matlin from Madrid. Others came from up and down both coasts from California to Washington State and Florida up to Maine. Class of ’89s also traveled from Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan to join us for the weekend.


And there were children, more than 200 of them, many sporting those “’89 kid” hats. Some were just learning to toddle and others were practically as old as we were 20 years ago, getting ready to contemplate their own futures. What a treat it was to look at a nametag and then up into the eyes of a child to search for some familiar features.


Special thanks to David Hammond, who provided our class with the delicious wine for our Saturday evening dinner. He and his brother own the winery in California where the wine is produced, and host wine-tasting parties around the country. You can find more information about them at www.rocknrollwine.com.


Thank you to Anton Anderson for coordinating our souvenirs and Nicole Conte Stevens and Catherine Baggia Duwan for their work on our family picnic. And special gratitude to Zach Levine, my spouse, who designed our reunion logo, helped with our reunion Web site and arranged for the fantastic Saturday night band, Wherehouse, that kept many of us dancing and socializing into the wee hours.


Now we push on, as an incredibly strong class that set the 20th reunion-giving record, raising $1.5 million for the College during these difficult economic times. Thanks to our head agents Bobby Jaffe and Todd Timmerman for their dedication and hard work, along with our reunion-giving chairs Bridget McDonald Fawcett, Bill Dean and Jim Katzman.


For the next five years Bobby and Todd continue as head agents; Tom Beecher will again be class treasurer. Ellie Mahoney Loughlin will continue on as president, while her departing co-president Laura Fitch Mattson will oversee mini-reunions with Matt McDonald. Eric Berlin will be our new vice president; Kristen Daly Schneider will continue to do our newsletters, joined by Cat Baggia Duwan; and David Aman will work on our Web site. Finally, I’ll be continuing on as your class secretary, writing this column, so I’ll look forward to hearing from you.


—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com